You really ought to read Mondoweiss every day. The following quote is several posts down tonight, below items about Gaza and Israelis criticizing Israeli policy, etc. etc.
I'm like Michelle Obama today, proud to be a Jew for once! Why? Aussie journalist Antony Loewenstein has a beautiful piece in Haaretz commending newly-elected Australian P.M. Kevin Rudd for his apology to the Aboriginals for the terrors done to the indigenous Australian population when children were forcibly removed from their families in the 50s and 60s--the "lost generation". Lots of Australian Jews have praised Rudd's action. And of course Loewenstein makes the connection to the Australian Jewish response to the Nakba of '48, when Palestine was cleansed of 750,000 Palestinians, and the continuing dispossession of the West Bank.
"no Jewish leaders seem capable of considering similar sentiments towards the Palestinians.
"They blame somebody else for the fact that the number of settlers rose by five percent in the West Bank in 2007. They remain mute when Israel's Interior Minister Meir Sheerit suggests destroying a Gaza neighbourhood. They look away when Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger urges Israel to move Gazans to the Sinai Peninsula."
"New Republic editor Marty Peretz recently told Haaretz, "No occupation is kind or sweet. But bad things happen everywhere, all the time."
And where is Loewenstein's argument appearing? In Haaretz, of course. Israel can hear these opinions. They are marginalized in my country, as the voices of Arabists, terrorist-sympathizers, appeasers. We are all morally inscribed and reinscribed in the Shoah here, but offered no education at all about the dispossession of the Palestinians. This is going to change! Young Jews, get on this moral train now! Be hip and be smart, don't get left on a siding with the old stale generation while history moves forward! Toot-toot, hear that whistle blowin?
Weiss keeps making several related points: 1) Zionism does not equal Judaism - the Zionist project is not part of the Jewish faith; 2) Jews in America should not put Israel's interests ahead of America's; 3) America needs to look out for its own best interests, not those Israel perceives as best for Israel; and 4) the effect of Israeli pressure and Israel-supporting interest groups on American policy must be openly discussed in America.
Weiss thinks a tide is turning in this country, among mainstream academics and pundits, as well as among young Jews and other young Americans who are starting to open their eyes to the occupation and Israel's behavior.
I could link to him every day but that seems excessive. Read his blog and bookmark it.
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